We had a typewriter in the basement. It had its own suitcase. It was heavy and I always jammed up the keys. It was worth jamming them in order to pick through and un-jam them.

Everything I ever typed had the holes on the wrong side, and the top margin at the bottom. I seemed to like custom paper sizes, trimming the paper…just ‘cuz.

It made a noise. Not a thwack not a thump but a combination of the two. Then the letter appeared. It didn’t have the fancy corrective paper, I just re-typed the letter over and over and over again until the mistake (and its replacement) were a smudgy hole.

I wrote stories about currency, The Misadventures ofBig Bully Dollar. I wrote about my pet Pegasus and the airplane I intended to build. I wrote about my friend Chris(topher) but abbreviated his name to “Christ”. Christ and I went on a lot of adventures; my teachers must’ve thought my parents were evangelicals.

On the Scriptnotes podcast, John August uses the phrase “something that exists in the world” to mark the definitive transition from idea or intention to physical presence.

A typewritten page, however wrinkled, however corrected is something that exists in this world. I have them.

Is a .pdf something that exists?

I don’t have a typewriter anymore. What will my daughters look back on? Their first e-book?

Each October Haruki Murakami’s name gets trotted out for the Nobel Prize for Literature and each year it goes to someone else. This year, a fabled bookie, known for his literary prize predicting infallibility, says that tomorrow is the day.

We’ll see.

Regardless, I send Mr. Murakami my love and adoration. It was January of 2005 that I picked him up for the first time. I read a review of Kafka on the Shore that hyped its bildungsroman arc: young man goes on bizarro adventure, meets strange characters, danger and self-discovery ensue.

Only, wait. What…? How the…?

Murakami is a poultice for my aching brain. He presents solutions for the equations of being non-linearly and with such elegance that my overly-analytic, rigidly-doubtful mind is by turns baffled, paralyzed, and then put to sleep.

Mr. Murakami, you are a Vulcan Death Grip for my banality. Thank you. You are jazz incarnate.

I hope tomorrow brings you the acclaim you deserve. Just keep doing what you’re doing.